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Thieves, Liars and Idiots: The Two Hour Democratic Debate

A night the Democratic Party should be ashamed of.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

“A little bit of this town goes a very long way,” Hunter S. Thompson said. “After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years.”

That went triple for the miserable parade of hypocrisies that was the Democratic debate where a gaggle of establishment political hacks claimed to be the voice of political change and where men and women whose combined net worth could break banks ranted about the rich in a debate hosted in a $2.7 billion dollar luxury resort and casino with its own Ferrari dealership so that the candidates can take a break from their income inequality spiels to test drive a 2015 Maserati GranTurismo.

The Democratic debate only ran hours, but it seemed to last for years as the Democratic Party’s crazy Socialist grandpa Bernie Sanders nervously waved his hands, struggled to follow the answers of the other candidates and talked about himself in the third person.

Sanders’ support comes from his authenticity and he was certainly authentic tonight promising to make Americans love Socialism, claiming that Global Warming was the greatest national security threat and warning that the planet will soon be uninhabitable.

At one point he began talking about what has been happening to the middle class, then he paused having forgotten what it was the middle class was doing, and then he remembered his line. It was “disappearing.” Much like the middle class of Socialist states like the USSR, Cuba and North Korea.

The Socialist parasite who lived off taxpayers by collecting unemployment so he could campaign, eventually convinced enough voters to elect him so that he could spend the rest of his career living off taxpayers while berating them for not paying enough taxes.

Back when he was living off unemployment, he campaigned for an end to “all time limitations for unemployment benefits.” Up on stage, Bernie Sanders is still a miserable failure of a human being who couldn’t work for a living, and has spent his career fulminating against successful people because they have mastered the secret of success that eludes him. And the secret is… working for a living.

Bernie Sanders isn’t bitter and angry because America is so unfair to working people. What horrified CNN viewers wondering why Grandpa Munster was running for president were seeing wasn’t righteous indignation. It was the venomous entitlement of a parasite who believes that those who work should support ‘leftectuals’ like him and Karl Marx while they draw up plans for a post-economic economy.

In a better political system, Bernie Sanders mumbling something about how we “need to raise public consciousness” would be the worst thing on stage. But these were the Democratic debates.

Once Sanders took off, other Democrats had to become Bernie Sanders. They also had to be anti-establishment voices for change even if they, like Sanders, are career politicians who if they were thrown out of the muddy stream of government would pant and expire, who have never had any new ideas and will never have any new ideas, and who hate any change that doesn’t pad their pockets.

Hillary Clinton assured voters that she was more progressive than moderate, even as she promised them that she could work with Republicans. And then every time she was attacked from the left, she scampered off to bash Republicans. If Hillary had ever voted to the left of Bernie Sanders on anything, at least she wasn’t one of those filthy Republicans. Like the owner of the hotel hosting their little debate.

Like every other candidate, Hillary Clinton was the voice of change. She claimed to be an outsider because she’s a woman. She claimed that being a woman is what makes her different than Obama.

If you hated a man stealing all your money and taking away all your civil rights, get ready for some real political change now that a woman is going to do it.

Hillary claimed that the “basic bargain” that she was raised with is “If you work hard and do your part, you should be able to get ahead.” You can tell that Hillary’s father was a Republican. Instead of working hard and doing her part, she married Bill, who disappointed her father’s expectations that he might turn Republican and instead slimed his way through Arkansas and all the way to the White House.

Instead of working hard and doing her part, Hillary’s sleazy crooked ways would shame the sleaziest scumbag in Vegas. Hillary claims that she was “blessed” by her ill-gotten gains. She neglects to mention the laundry list of companies, lobbies and foreign governments that did the “blessing.”

After charging colleges six figures to deliver speeches, she squawks that colleges need to “get their costs down.” If colleges got their costs down, who would pay for her private jets?

If anyone’s morals are perfect for Vegas, it’s Hillary who will say and do anything for money. And when challenged on her magically mutating views, she explained that she is “consistent” and has a “range of views”. And that range of views consistently comes with a high price range.

Hillary promises to “save capitalism from itself.” But who will save capitalism from Hillary Clinton?

Two freaks would be two too few for a Democratic debate. Standing next to Hillary was the animated wax figure of Martin O’Malley putting on a very convincing imitation of a human being. Some candidates overrehearse their lines for a debate. O’Malley overrehearsed his mannerisms. Like a bad soap opera actor, he was always searching for the camera to soulfully peer into and filling every line of his artificial actor’s diction with tremors of barely suppressed emotion even when ordering a cup of coffee.

O’Malley was a poor man’s John Edwards and John Edwards was a poor man’s Bill Clinton.

Every time his unnaturally white teeth shone, moths flew into his mouth. Not satisfied with sanctimoniously preaching about every issue that came his way, he actually brought stunt gun control guests to the debate whose groundless lawsuit had been thrown out of court. It was the sort of thing John Edwards might have done, if the ambulance chasing adulterer had even less shame than O’Malley.

After all his desperate attacks on Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and method acting, the only thing that O’Malley had to offer America was a promise to make all our electricity “green” by the time he’s 90.

The horror continued with Lincoln Chafee, a man whose only purpose in coming to the debate was to take home the prize of the worst political candidate on this stage and on every stage in history.

Challenged on his party switching, he claimed to be “a block of granite” on the issues. Then he whined that he shouldn’t be held accountable for a Senate vote because it was his “first vote” and “my dad died.”

There hasn’t been a presidential bid this compelling since Morris the Cat ran for office.

Chafee, a former Republican, Independent and the direct descendant of several governors, had only one strong point in a left-wing party and that was his anti-American foreign policy. So he came out for Russian agent Edward Snowden and pledged to “end the wars.” Which wars? Who knows? He doesn’t.

In one of the debate’s greatest moments of glorious insanity, Chafee insisted that Hillary’s email scandal was an issue because of Iraqi WMDs.

In the 2016 election, Lincoln Chafee is running against the Iraq War because he assumes that Democratic voters have been in a coma for ten years. Who is to say he isn’t right?

Amid this nonsense, Jim Webb broke in with occasional outbursts of common sense. When “gun violence” was being discussed, he was the only one to actually link the shootings to gangs, not to guns walking off the shelf and shooting people. He was also the only candidate willing to say “All lives matter” instead of piously acceding to the obscene racial supremacism of “Black lives matter.”

On foreign policy, Webb was the adult in the room. In a debate where candidates felt comfortable claiming that Global Warming is the greatest national security threat, he was the only one to mention Chinese hacking. He was the only one to tie in the Arab Spring and the Iran deal to the chaos in Syria.

In a field of wannabe anti-war candidates, Webb was the only one to denounce the new Libyan war that Obama and Hillary began. While other candidates yammered about Bush’s wars, he did the unthinkable by talking about Obama’s war.

Webb modestly declared that he was the “most qualified person standing here to be commander in chief”. Sadly, he was right. Not because he’s a great candidate, but because he’s a throwback to an earlier Democratic Party whose candidates could discuss serious issues like adults.

That’s not the Democratic Party of today, which isn’t just radical, but also unserious. The CNN debate discussed pot instead of the violence in Israel. Its candidates have to take the most radical positions on everything because their base lacks any actual understanding of the issues. They have to lie constantly to their voters while trying to top Bernie Sanders’ crazed Communist fever dreams.

O’Malley claimed that “Assad’s invasion of Syria will be a blunder”. Hillary Clinton bragged about a free Libyan election of moderates for a country where Al Qaeda and ISIS are taking over entire cities. She resurrected the same old “Gaddafi genocide” lie that Obama used to sell his illegal war without anyone calling her on it. Sanders wants us to look to Sweden and mumbled something about the government being involved in our websites. Hillary Clinton listed Iranians and Republicans as her biggest enemies.

Lincoln Chafee claimed that he is proudest of having no scandals.

Instead of being ashamed of this spectacle, the candidates gave self-congratulatory closing statements applauding themselves for their “substantial” debate that was so much better than the GOP debate.

And then they talked about coming together. Hillary Clinton, the most hated candidate in the race, wants to “heal the divide”. Bernie Sanders ranted that the only way to stop the Republicans is for “millions of people to come together”. He mentioned that he hopes Republicans don’t control Congress.

Bernie forgot that millions of people coming together to fight Socialism is why Republicans control Congress.

And so Democrats learned that they could vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, vote for Bernie Sanders to stop the government from putting potheads in jail, vote for O’Malley because he used a dozen Crest whitening strips on his teeth or vote for Lincoln Chafee because he’s a block of granite. They could vote for Jim Webb, but he’s disqualified because he can find Syria on a map.

“In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity,” Hunter S. Thompson also said. But in a party of stupid thieves, stupidity isn’t a sin. It’s a virtue.